A Tribute To Yusef Lateef: Yeyi Adam Rudolph And Ralph Jones With Alex Marcelo

Doors 6:30 pm / $10-$20 suggested donation YEYI (yay-yee) A Wordless Psalm of Prototypical Vibrations This ensemble, comprised of three of Dr. Yusef Lateef's closest collaborators of the past several decades, performs a musical invocation of the man and his work. Adam Rudolph: Membranophones and Idiophones: handrumset (congas, djembe, tarija), frame drum, thumb pianos, gongs, percussion and mulitphonic singing, sintir, piano Ralph Jones: Aerophones: alto & CO flutes, bass clarinet, tenor & soprano saxophone, ney, hichiriki, bagpipes, bamboo flutes and piano Alex Marcelo: Acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes Born in 1955, handrummer, percussionist, composer, multi instrumentalist and improviser Rudolph has been hailed as “a pioneer in world music” by the New York Times. Currently he composes for his groups Moving Pictures, Hu: Vibrational, and Go: Organic Orchestra, a 15 – 50 piece ensemble for which he has developed an original music notation and conducting system. Over the past 25 years he has developed a unique syncretic approach to hand drumming in creative collaborations with outstanding artists of cross-cultural and improvised music, including Don Cherry, Jon Hassel, L. Shankar, Pharaoh Sanders, Fred Anderson, Hassan Hakmoun and Wadada Leo Smith among others. Ralph Jones has been active as an artist in the African-American improvisational tradition for over 25 years. During that time, he has performed throughout the United States and Europe with several masters of that tradition including Pharoah Sanders, Ahmed Abdul Malik, Yusef Lateef, Ella Fitzgerald and Kenn Cox, and has appeared on numerous recordings. Jones holds a Bachelor's degree in Ethnomusicology from U.C.L.A. where, in addition to his academic research, he studied the Hichiriki with Japanese Gagku master Togi. He has received the Cannonball Adderly Memorial Scholarship, the Clifton Webb and the Joel Miller Music Awards, and several student research grants. Jones is a founding member of Eternal Wind. Rudolph and Jones’ partnership dates back more then thirty years to the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, where they performed on a bill that also included Sun Ra and James Brown. They were brought together by trumpeter Charles Moore, with whom they later cofounded the Eternal Wind quartet. “I feel the most complete sense of understanding with Ralph,” Rudolph says, “which means that we have a profound kind of freedom. We understand each other on a creative level and on a philosophical level. I like to work with musicians who understand what I’m doing, not just musically but metaphorically.” Merely a Traveler on the Cosmic Path (“N’zungi a nzilla” in KI-Kongo) is a Lembe initiatory proverb and refers to a way of living within nature towards which the artists strive. It also references the legacy of a culture that has rippled outwards to Kongo and from there over continents and generations, through to the African-American musical influences that Rudolph and Jones draw upon. Over the course of the fourteen explorations that make up Merely a Traveler, Rudolph and Jones draw from a pool of shared knowledge – musical studies, each other’s music languages, their own prior interactions – to communicate with a penetrating and intuitive intensity. “Over our long history of performance and research together we have created an extensive body of compositions and rhythmic and intervallic approaches that we can call upon,” Rudolph says. “And those elements are present in a pure, deconstructed form so that we can construct and orchestrate them any way we imagine to - in the moment - based upon listening to each other.” Returning to the subject of that sonic alchemy that this recording so amply demonstrates, Rudolph likens the discovery of a musical soul mate to a romantic one. “You could list of reasons why you marry someone, but it comes down to a feeling. It’s something that you know from the get-go but also something that develops over time. Ultimately it’s a mystery.” RELATED PROGRAMMING Friday, March 20, 6-9 pm / free Exhibition Opening of Yusef Lateef: Towards the Unknown https://www.facebook.com/events/787693761285943/ Saturday, March 21 at 2 pm / free Panel Discussion: Dr. Yusef Lateef's life, art and time in Detroit, including Bill Harris (playwright and poet), Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert (co-authors, Before Motown), and Alhena Katsof (curator) https://www.facebook.com/events/646381518825120/